


transience

by naeildo



Series: 300 word balloons [3]
Category: TWICE (Band)
Genre: (somewhat) disbandment, Canon, yeah this is...not happy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-11
Updated: 2019-06-11
Packaged: 2020-04-24 19:58:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,791
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19180351
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/naeildo/pseuds/naeildo
Summary: "I wish this could last forever," Tzuyu tells her. She's been trying this thing, recently. Emotional honestly, after all of them have battered and battered away at her defences, after they've waited for forever to hear her tell them she loves them. In her own way, she has said it a thousand times. A million times.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> i think this might be slightly confusing (my bad), so as way of explanation: the numbers at the top are the number of years to the next contract renewal!

 

 

Running through the heat heart beat  
You shine like silver in the sunlight  
You light up my whole heart

  


 

 

_Four._

  
"You like that?"  
  
"Why?" Chaeyoung says, looking up from the shawl she has in her hand. "You don't?"  
  
Chaeyoung's tone doesn't carry any fight, the way she does when Dahyun or the other  _unnies_  express disagreement with her choices, and something at the back of Tzuyu's brain wonders what it is about her that makes it this way. It's just soft. Expectant. Accommodating, the way Chaeyoung isn't with anyone else. Most times it makes Tzuyu happy - preferential treatment - but tonight Tzuyu wonders if Chaeyoung really thinks her so fragile. Tzuyu has been thinking a litany of things, recently.  
  
"It's..." She's still learning how to describe things in detail; that was never essential to the vocabulary she needed to navigate this world, and Tzuyu has never had much of the perfectionist tendencies Mina does, nor been the social animal Sana is. "Too blue," she decides, after a bit of thought, and Chaeyoung laughs, the kind that creases at the corners of her eyes.  
  
It's a small one. Tzuyu catalogues the sight anyway, tucks it into the corner of her heart, and watches Chaeyoung regard the shawl thoughtfully.  
  
"I was going to buy it for you," Chaeyoung says, putting it back into the pile. "Your old scarves are fraying,"  
  
Then Chaeyoung is already moving further down along the aisle, and Tzuyu is worried for a moment that their lingering may have attracted a crowd - when she looks up, people have already started to gather at the doors. The fans with a more elastic concept of personal space have started crowding in on them, hanging around the other clothes racks.  
  
"We should go," Tzuyu tells her, because this shopping trip has already turned unproductive. Even in a place like Barcelona they can still be found.  
  
Chaeyoung stills. She has to look up to see Tzuyu's face, and Tzuyu always feels strangely bare even under a hat and face mask, even as she tries to hide what she's thinking. What she's feeling. With Chaeyoung, Tzuyu tends not to need to verbalize, and it is only now that Tzuyu starts to think of it as a weakness.  
  
Chaeyoung's hand finds her wrist, peeking out from under her sweater sleeves.  
  
"Let's just look for a little longer," she soothes, and Tzuyu can feel her nerves unraveling despite herself, because Chaeyoung promises the moon and makes sure to get it. "You're in dire need of something blue."  
  


 

 

_Seven and a half._

  
It's not necessarily because Chaeyoung is  _confident_  - many of them are, in their different ways, Somi perhaps most of all, the kind of bright boisterousness that announces its arrival every time she enters a room. Tzuyu, herself, knows the audience think she's beautiful, knows the different ways she can leverage that. Knows when to keep her mouth shut.  
  
But Chaeyoung is something else. Tzuyu sits and watches her from the corner of the practice room, the three times she tries a line she does something different: a different swing of the arm, a different place she sets the toes of her sleek black boots. Tzuyu takes a sip of water and stands up, stretching, walking in front of the mirror but far enough from Chaeyoung that they can afford not to acknowledge each other, no loose elbows or pesky fingertips.  
  
After all, Chaeyoung has a reputation for being kind enough, but not particularly friendly, and Tzuyu can work with that. Prefers that, almost.  
  
So - it's with surprise that Tzuyu turns to look at Chaeyoung, when the other girl smiles at her through the mirror.  
  
"Gets a little tiring sometimes, huh," Chaeyoung says, and motions to the door. "Feels like anyone might burst in soon to deliver the news that one of us is going on the chopping block."  
  
Chaeyoung doesn't simplify or slow herself down for Tzuyu, whether it's because she doesn't care to or because she respects that Tzuyu can understand her well enough, but Tzuyu struggles. Just a bit. She doesn't let it show on her face, but doesn't know if she should offer a response either.  
  
"A little pain is worth it," Tzuyu says, carefully. She hasn't forgotten that she'd tried to drag Chaeyoung out of Major, but with the way Chaeyoung is acting it's almost as if she's forgotten.  
  
The other girl is smiling again, moving to close the distance between them before their moment is interrupted by the other girls streaming in through the doorway, back from their staggered lunch break. Everything moves in slow, grueling motion now that they're trapped in this competition, and so does the way the smile slips off Chaeyoung's face. Tzuyu can tell it was real. Fond, almost, before Chaeyoung disappears into Somi's insistent arms.  
  
_Why are you talking to me?_  Tzuyu wants to ask, but she wouldn't be able to even if the cameras were turned off.  _What do you want from me?_  
  


 

 

_Five and a half._

  
Chaeyoung wants her to wear the blindfold-bandana all the way to the living room.  
  
Tzuyu doesn't say that she thinks it's silly, because the last thing she saw before being plunged into darkness was Chaeyoung's wide, girlish smile, and Tzuyu doesn't really know how to burst that bubble.  
  
So she lets herself be dragged along on heavy feet, and somewhere in the room someone has broken out what sounds like a vuvuzela, the kind that her brother used to have a go at in the mornings, shaking up the whole house, before he moved overseas for college.  
  
When they rip the blindfold off, Tzuyu is standing in the middle of a room full of balloons, a big cake perched on their dingy wooden table. Everyone is already in party hats, and Tzuyu realizes suddenly that someone managed to slip one onto her own head while she was walking here. Spontaneously, in her gut bubbles a warmth that doesn't quite match the happiness she felt as a child or teenager, in rancuous classrooms and shouting across corridors, but this feels terribly close to the home that Tzuyu hasn't returned to for a while. A new one that she's built here, piece by piece, with their own hands.  
  
"Hey," Jihyo starts, moving to where she is, because Tzuyu seems to have frozen on the spot, lost her head in the clouds for a moment. "Tzuyu, are you alright?"  
  
Tzuyu lets herself smile, then, a loose one, teethy and bright, and she knows that Jihyo can tell the difference, relaxes her grip on Tzuyu's arms instantly.  
  
In all the festivities, Tzuyu doesn't cry, just finds herself laughing more and more as the night goes on, even pretends not to see the room they keep secretly going into to drink alcohol, not even when Momo stumbles out red as a tomato.  
  
  
  
"Did you like that?" Chaeyoung asks through a mouthful of foam and over the sound of her electric toothbrush, scrubbing at her teeth while Tzuyu waits at the door. Tonight the youngest ones have been left at the end of the line, blamed for the age crisis that Nayeon had unceremoniously plunged the rest of the older girls into, used as a token for their first rights to use of the bathroom.  
  
Chaeyoung is watching her carefully through the bathroom mirror, even if she pretends that she's getting at the very last piece of honey coated glutinous rice ball under her teeth.  
  
"Thank you," Tzuyu says. Hears Chaeyoung let out a long, happy breath; watches as she bends down to spit into the sink. Chaeyoung steps up onto the kink on the floor between the living room and bathroom, so she's a little taller, leaning upwards into Tzuyu's space. Tzuyu expects - she's not sure what she expects. Some kind of second birthday kiss, maybe. Tzuyu angles her cheek in preparation, and hears Chaeyoung's laughter as she leans closer.  
  
But Chaeyoung just wraps her arms around Tzuyu slowly, cages Tzuyu's own arms in so she can't lift them, and squeezes.  
  


 

 

_Three and a half._

  
They barely get moments away from the camera in Jejudo, and Tzuyu doesn't really mind too much. Everything is too nice here: the weather, the wind, the camera crew. This place feels a little like the mountains in Taiwan, sells lovely beancurd, smells a bit like home.  
  
But they steal a bit of time alone, when Tzuyu pulls Chaeyoung to the shoreline of the beach, drags them away into the water. The camera crew are taking a short break in their huts, and they've been told to do the same, but Tzuyu had been insistent that they go out again. Dahyun was too lazy to put her sunscreen on again, so it just leaves the two of them, stumbling into the wind.  
  
Chaeyoung shouts something about how her pants had just dried up, and that they're going to be so wrinkly come the next morning, but Tzuyu doesn't care. There's a euphoria to this that she's scared they won't be able to find again any time soon, the freedom of being here, in the moment, dancing in the water.  
  
"Chaeng," Tzuyu says, gently, and Chaeyoung stops struggling against her hold to look at her, the water beating against her waist. Tzuyu is only thigh-deep. The sun is setting behind her, haloing her in light, but Tzuyu doesn't look away even if it stings.  
  
"I wish this could last forever," Tzuyu tells her. She's been trying this thing, recently. Emotional honestly, after all of them have battered and battered away at her defences, after they've waited for forever to hear her tell them she loves them. In her own way, she has said it a thousand times. A million times.  
  
Chaeyoung reaches up to cup Tzuyu's jaw, and Tzuyu can't help the way she flinches. All of this is still new to her, whatever she feels for Chaeyoung, every colour thrown up behind her eyelids in bursts of light. Her fingers are small but heavy against the curve of bone under skin, and Tzuyu daren't open her eyes.  
  
"Everything can last forever if you want it to," Chaeyoung says, softly.  
  
Tzuyu doesn't believe that. When she opens her eyes, Chaeyoung is still staring at her, eyes wet. Chaeyoung doesn't believe that either, Tzuyu realizes, and if Chaeyoung doesn't then no one can.  
  
The moon will never be pulled out of the sky. Tzuyu will never have Chaeyoung forever.  
  
Of course, you could reverse that line of thinking, Tzuyu considers, as they walk back to the beach, as the staff rush in to towel her down, as the sun plunges down beyond the horizon, throwing them into a comfortable evening darkness. Chaeyoung will never have Tzuyu forever. Tzuyu will find a nice boy, and settle down, and go home, and Chaeyoung... Chaeyoung will never wait for her, will be across the globe in the moment, sending her postcards from some other horizon. Content in that half-hearted having, across timezones and oceans.  
  


 

 

_One._

  
"Gets a little tiring sometimes, huh," Chaeyoung asks, strewn across Tzuyu's lap. They're camped out in the practice room, gearing up for the next tour, and Tzuyu feels an almost uncanny sense of  _deja vu_. Chaeyoung has been restless, these days, almost a little angry, though Tzuyu hasn't quite figured out what exactly she's angry at.  
  
She's heard the agitated whispers between her and Dahyun, and Tzuyu wonders what  _that_  is about too, only hears things like  _artistic freedom_  and  _repetitive_ , and Tzuyu thought they'd been over this a long time ago. That Chaeyoung had found peace with it. The company has been allowing her to do so much more, anyway, and if anything, Tzuyu thought she might be  _grateful_  for it.  
  
Then again, Tzuyu has always been a bit of a follower, and Chaeyoung has... not. She cards her fingers through Chaeyoung's short, bleached blonde hair, relaxing as Chaeyoung softens against her in her lap, lets out a quiet noise.  
  
"Do you want to talk about it?"  
  
Chaeyoung pries one eye open, gaze coming to rest on Tzuyu as her vision clears. Tzuyu wonders how she looks from this angle, chin fats hanging out like little handles for the taking. Everyone tells her she still looks beautiful.  
  
"How many chins can you make if you push all the way back?" Chaeyoung asks instead, flattening her chin against her chest playfully, which is a  _no_ , Tzuyu thinks, and tries not to feel hurt about the fact that Chaeyoung has been arguing about this with Dahyun for months and won't even deign to let Tzuyu know the reason for it.  
  
"I don't know," Tzuyu plays along.   
  
"I can do about five," Chaeyoung boasts, laughing into Tzuyu's thigh, and Tzuyu doesn't blush, has been in even closer proximity to Chaeyoung to do that, even as heat rises in her chest.  
  
"Will you ever tell me?" Tzuyu says, because maybe she doesn't really want to play along. Chaeyoung feels like she's been walking a tightrope away from Tzuyu recently, and Tzuyu just has to make one wrong move for it to snap. Chaeyoung lays her head heavier against Tzuyu's thigh, and Tzuyu imagines her turning her head in to bite. To do something. To offer Tzuyu something other than this false intimacy.  
  
"I want your popularity." Chaeyoung says, both eyes closed. "I want to use it."   
  
Tzuyu reels back like someone's reached deep inside her and rearranged everything in her chest, and Chaeyoung's head drops to the floor. Her eyes crack open as she starts to laugh, head bobbing up and down against the linoleum, and Tzuyu wants to crawl forward, apologize, soothe the bruises that will appear soon on the back of Chaeyoung's head, covered up by platinum hair dye. But she sits and does nothing but tremble.  
  
Chaeyoung sits up, looking in the mirror at Tzuyu, and Tzuyu turns her head, but Chaeyoung is there, everywhere, on all four walls, mirror to mirror.  
  
"I want to march up to the CEO's desk and say,  _you can't afford to lose me_ ," Chaeyoung continues, and Tzuyu says: "You can do that," bites her tongue when Chaeyoung looks at her with something like poison in her eyes.  
  
"Do you want to know why I stopped telling you about it?" Chaeyoung says, and she's picking herself up the floor, and she's not running away because Chaeyoung never runs away. She only leaves, and Tzuyu waits and waits for her to come back. This time, she isn't so certain.  
  
"I-" Tzuyu says, and feels pathetic when tears start to stain her cheeks.  
  
"Because you always say  _that_. That I'm indispensible. That everyone wants me around. Just because  _you_ , for some reason, seem to think that  _your - liking_  me is enough, as if your lovesick googly eyes are going to let the songs that I want to release magically -"  
  
"SHUT UP," Tzuyu shouts, and Chaeyoung rears back for a miniscule moment, eyes pulled wide before she breaks into a small, mirthless smile.   
  
"Go on," Tzuyu tells her, feels her whole body shaking. "Leave, if that's what you want to do."  
  
Chaeyoung has a hierarchy of loves. Tzuyu has always know this, never quite dared to ask where she fell on it. Because it was always going to lead to this: the door clicking closed, the sound of footsteps fading. Tzuyu left alone.   


 

 

_Six and a half._

  
For what it's worth, Tzuyu doesn't trust most of them until a video of her waving a flag of her country explodes in her face. There is something about crises that either bring everyone closer or tear everyone apart, and even in this sort of empty waking misery Tzuyu can find a little part of herself that appreciates that it is the former. Even so, Tzuyu is tired of them staring wordlessly at her from different parts of the room now that she's on house arrest, and has had enough of Dahyun trying to play the Taiwanese national anthem on her stupid keyboard as if it really means anything at all.  
  
So she steals away to the cafeteria toilet, locks herself in a cubicle, and tries to breathe.  
  
Chaeyoung finds her after an hour, and sends the trainees tittering outside away with some low words that Tzuyu doesn't hear before banging on the stall door.  
  
"I know you're in there," Chaeyoung says. Tzuyu stares down at her hands, white from how long she's been sitting on them. "Tzuyu, open up," Chaeyoung tries, and Tzuyu greets her with more silence.  
  
" _Zhou Ziyu_ ," Chaeyoung says, again, in her native tongue, and Tzuyu's head snaps up in - surprise. Her body remembers. She reaches tentatively for the lock and snaps it open, the door swinging open and barely missing her knees.  
  
Chaeyoung has the softest expression Tzuyu has ever seen on her face, and Tzuyu feels like - but she's done enough apologizing for a lifetime, so she doesn't, just stares back at Chaeyoung.  
  
This is, Tzuyu thinks, what Park CEO calls the cooling off period. Every controversy will pass, and Tzuyu need only grin and bear it.   
  
"It's been weeks," Tzuyu says, softly. Watches the toilet door open, a small head pop in, and then pop back out.  
  
Chaeyoung sighs. Tzuyu has always wondered what it is that goes on in her mind, how she stands so impossibly straight, how she lets every arrow fly off her armour without making a sound.  
  
"And it could be months," Chaeyoung says. "Maybe a year if we're unlucky."  
  
The use of the collective noun makes Tzuyu flinch.   
  
"I won't quit," Tzuyu tells her. "I can't quit."  
  
"Good," Chaeyoung marches up to her, hooks two arms under her elbows and  _pulls_. Tzuyu lets her floppy little body be pulled up, gangly as it falls into Chaeyoung's arms. She's so tired of fighting.  
  
"Because I wasn't planning on letting you."  
  


 

 

_Two._

  
"Why are you doing that?" Nayeon has been squirming in her car seat the entire ride to the hotel, and Tzuyu has been gradually set on edge over the long journey back.  
  
"What?" Tzuyu's staring out the window at something in the distance, some stupid flickering spot, some traffic light. New York is so busy, so bright. The perfect place for Chaeyoung - now and in the future, too.  
  
Nayeon sighs. Tzuyu hears it, but doesn't turn to look at her. She's tired. The tour has been long, and it's been a while since they've been in a place where she actually speaks the language, and she's  _tired_.  
  
"I'm not allowed to be tired now?"

"That's not what I meant, dear," Nayeon says soothingly, and Tzuyu immediately regrets how crabby she's being when they're all running 20-hour days. She never used to complain this much, but something about this tour has been uncomfortable and taxing in a way that nothing has been before.

"I'm sorry," Tzuyu says. The ocean of lights flashes behind her eyes. "I'm just... thinking about the future more, these days."

Nayeon makes a small sound of agreement, and Tzuyu knows how much she thinks about it too. Tortures herself with it, every scenario. Every new and beautiful girl group another thorn in their side.

"You don't have to worry," Tzuyu tells her, and Nayeon lets out a snort so loud the driver shifts a little in the front seat.

Nayeon had been caught in a dating scandal recently - nothing too serious, and they've already gone their separate ways - but she experienced the first seismic quakes that could ripple through her career, how the people who professed to love her left in droves. Something had changed with her after that, even if Tzuyu can't describe it. Everything has become heavier. Tzuyu has been dabbling in dating herself, but she has been far more discreet, meeting in a rented home or his mother's place. It's weird, all of this.

" _You_ don't have to worry," Nayeon says, and Tzuyu thinks of bleached hair and the sunshine, Jejudo's waves lapping at her feet. A moment, frozen in time. Tzuyu knows Nayeon means something different: her looks, her age, the endless crowds of adoring fans she attracts everywhere she goes.

So Tzuyu says: "I know. I'm being silly."

 

_Zero._

Tzuyu does stay on. There is a market for her here and around the world, and linking up with different agencies has become such a small problem that it'd be foolish not to stay. Tzuyu signs the papers, walks out, and sees Chaeyoung standing in the middle of the hallway. Her mother tenses at her side, but Tzuyu walks forward anyway. The chasm that had erupted between them has smoothed over in the last year, and Chaeyoung is a friend again, even if Tzuyu has become more careful of her jagged edges. Even if Tzuyu is still -

"I'm gonna pee," Chaeyoung tells her. Tzuyu can see her mother's face wrinkle in distaste, but she follows Chaeyoung anyway into the bathroom, one with two stalls and an external door they can lock. Chaeyoung does so.

For a wild, ludicrous moment, Tzuyu wants to lean forward and close the distance between them, but Chaeyoung stares at her and she stares back.

"You're staying," Chaeyoung states. Tzuyu doesn't move. Doesn't quite know what to do.

"Chaeng..." she says, finally, and hadn't expected to sound so small. "Chaeng," she tries, again, and Chaeyoung crowds in so quickly that Tzuyu barely has time to think, to breathe, before Chaeyoung's lips are on hers, and when Chaeyoung finally pulls back Tzuyu finds herself gasping uncontrollably, palms braced against the edges of the white sink.

"I'm going to England," Chaeyoung says, and Tzuyu feels it: hot tears in her lungs, like she's fifteen again and the world has just opened up and been put back together at her feet.

 _I love you_ , Tzuyu doesn't say. Emotional honesty is overrated. Tzuyu's mother is banging at the door, and Chaeyoung smiles in a way that pulls her back to their first years, teeth crooked, eyes unsure. When Tzuyu had been a different person, untainted by the hole Chaeyoung's cracked open in her chest.

Chaeyoung's hand on her jaw lingers, then drops back to her side.

 

 

_Six._

 

They're on a rooftop, legs hanging off the edge; their managers would kill them if they knew they were here, which is all part of the thrill. Promotions for their latest single are never going to wrap up, Tzuyu is starting to think, and they have another performance tomorrow in those baseball jackets and short shorts, dancing around in ten-degree weather. Tzuyu likes it. Tzuyu likes everything: the newness of it, their adoring fans, the way Chaeyoung is looking up at the stars right now, eyes bright with promise. The way her legs are kicking at Tzuyu's while she pretends not to notice.

"How do you think we'll do? Three years later? Ten years later?"

Chaeyoung always takes a while to answer these questions. Tzuyu thinks about regrouping, about the new concepts they might be trying, about the people they would have met. She wants to be popular.

Chaeyoung reaches out to brush a strand of hair behind Tzuyu's ear, and she shudders, all the way down to her toes.

"I think we'll be magnificent."


	2. Chapter 2

All Tzuyu wanted was a relaxing after-party. Instead, she had to settle for some actor that she had never met in her life trying to engage her in conversation about his film that she accidentally acknowledged that she'd watched (once, on the plane between Taiwan and Seoul, her red eyes closing halfway through). So now she's here, trying to walk as fast as humanly possible to the little "Toilet" sign at the end of the hallway to make her temporary escape.  
  
And then -  
  
"Tzuyu?"  
  
A familiar round face, hair cut so it falls just below her ears. Chaeyoung's smile is a little bewildered, and Tzuyu wonders what her own face betrays. Chaeyoung tucks a lock of hair behind her ear, and Tzuyu spots a tattoo under the shell of her ear that Chaeyoung's never even talked about on the group chat, much less posted a picture of. Tzuyu feels something twinge in her chest. Chaeyoung had asked her about the fish, wide-eyed and excited, before she'd brought it to the shop to be inked, and Tzuyu had told her it looked gorgeous even if she hadn't quite understood what she was supposed to be looking at. But they're different people now, in a different time, so Tzuyu doesn't reach out to brush at it with her fingertips, doesn't trace the shape of it as Chaeyoung closes her eyes and leans into her touch. Just stands, hands hanging by her sides, breath shallowing.  
  
"Hi," Chaeyoung says. Her voice is soft, and Tzuyu notices the violent blush on her cheeks, clearer now as she's walked forward into the neon glow cast by the Exit sign. Oh. Chaeyoung has never been that good of a drinker. "What're you doing here?"  
  
"My friend is - um... here," Tzuyu says, stuttering, and fights the urge to match the shorter girl's moves to close the distance. Chaeyoung lights up like a bulb, as if that explains everything. She's drunk, Tzuyu thinks, to herself, like a mantra, Chaeyoung stopping right in front of her. She's drunk, and this affection instead of reticence and flinching away from her won't mean anything the next time they meet at a get-together if Chaeyoung isn't in London, and -  
  
She's wearing a pair of comfortable flats today, Tzuyu towering over her in high heels. Chaeyoung presses her cheek into Tzuyu's shoulder, arms snaking around Tzuyu's waist to lock behind her back. "Missed you," Tzuyu hears her say, into the leather jacket, and a shot of - pain, of longing, of something - snakes behind Tzuyu's ribs.  
  
There's no one near enough to them to see what's going on, but Tzuyu wonders, still, if they've somehow been caught. Whether she and Chaeyoung's photo, blurry and taken with a shitty phone camera from far-away, will make the rounds as news of a mini reunion.  
  
Chaeyoung detaches herself from Tzuyu, looking up at her in a way that knocks the breath out of Tzuyu's lungs. Tzuyu hasn't seen that look directed at her in years, had to watch Chaeyoung's features shift as she turned to look at Tzuyu from the other end of the table. Now, she's only gentle, and fond, and Tzuyu wonders who Chaeyoung is seeing. Maybe a younger her, barely twenty-three, sharing a glance with Chaeyoung before they were lifted up into a giant arena. They had been so happy then. Or clueless. It felt the same, anyway.  
  
"Chaeng," Tzuyu says, before Chaeyoung can overwhelm her. Shakes her head as if to clear it. "What are you doing here?"  
  
Chaeyoung blinks back at her.  
  
"I'm here with," Chaeyoung says, and Tzuyu watches the wheels turn slowly in her head. "I'm here with my girl-" Chaeyoung doesn't regain sobriety, but there's something there, enough for Tzuyu to know why she's suddenly taken a step back from Tzuyu, hands drawn in front of her, left over the right. It shouldn't hurt this much, still, now, after so much time has passed, but Tzuyu has never known how to let go of old things.  
  
When they were younger, Tzuyu had dreamed of it. Attending a party together. Chaeyoung would do all the talking (not much), and they would leave before midnight, and Tzuyu would hold her hand in the taxi home.  
  
"Congratulations," Tzuyu forces herself to say, and Chaeyoung shakes her head. There's a humourless smile on her face.  
  
"It's not official yet, but I was going to tell you, once -"  
  
Once what? Once they'd been dating for a year and Tzuyu couldn't  _not_ know?  
  
If Chaeyoung looked up, she'd see the flicker of something across Tzuyu's face, angry and broken. But Chaeyoung doesn't.  
  
"I - understand," Tzuyu says. Laughs a little. "I would do the same, too, to be - careful, you know? All the more so if it's - I mean -"  
  
Chaeyoung just scuffs at the ground in front of her. "Yeah," she mutters. Hands on her elbows. "Yeah, you're right."  
  
 _What's wrong with that?_ Chaeyoung challenged her, once, the two of them bored out of their minds in the waiting room, Chaeyoung's hands holding her own loosely under the blanket they were sharing.  _Why would I have to hide it?_  And Tzuyu would bend, slowly, endlessly towards her, believing in impossible things.  
  
There's no such thing now, Tzuyu thinks, the green glow casting shadows on her face.  
  
"I have to -" Tzuyu says, gesturing towards the bathroom door.  
  
"Oh," Chaeyoung says. Looks up. "Yeah, sorry, you were going -"  
  
"It's fine," Tzuyu says, as lightly as she can. Gives Chaeyoung a half-smile, which the other girl mirrors. Clenches her left fist before pushing the door open.  
  
"I'll see you."


End file.
